Media and polling organizations are neglecting the Arab sector ahead of
January’s elections by not including the Arab parties in their polls, according
to Hadash, an Arab-Jewish party with Communist roots.

MK Dov Henin sent a
letter of complaint to Elyakim Rubinstein, a Supreme Court judge and chairman of
the Central Elections Committee, asking that he work to make it mandatory to
include Arab parties in the political projections and polls taking place ahead
of the elections.

In a letter to Rubinstein, Henin asked for the
commission “to issue a renewed advisory that would tell pollsters and media
outlets to report [on the Arab sector] according to the principles of equality
as is standard in a democracy.”

Meanwhile, advertisements have already
been published informing the public how to vote. For example, if a person’s
current address is not the same as that listed with the Interior Ministry and on
his identity card, he may not be able to vote where he lives.

But these
ads do not appear to have gone out in Arabic.

“This is an issue that we
face in every election,” says Yousef T. Jabareen, the founding director of
Dirasat, the Arab Center for Law and Policy, based in Nazareth.

“The
election committee is not respecting Arabic as an official language of the
state, though it is by law, which means that all its activities should also be
in Arabic and it should target the Arab community,” he says. “It’s a need and
also a right to have the official language used by the authorities during
elections.

I hope that the election committee will use Arabic in all
media campaigns.

This is a crucial part of full political participation,
and they should adhere to the principle that everything should be in the two
languages.”

At a roundtable conference earlier this week at the Israel
Democracy Institute, held in conjunction with the Abraham Fund Initiatives, MK
Ahmed Tibi, head of the Ra’am-Ta’al list, said advertisements aimed at raising
public awareness about elections have ignored the Arab sector. Further, he
suggested it may be a deliberate approach and not just a matter of “forgetting”
the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arab.

“Recently there has been a
government advertising campaign to encourage voting, but it is focused on the
Jewish public, and it begs the question what stands behind the forgotten room of
the Arab voter? Is there someone, perhaps in Likud-Beytenu, who is not
interested in raising the rate of participation of Arab voters?”

Rubinstein on
Thursday followed up on Henin’s request with a formal letter to editors of media
outlets, requesting that they include Arab parties in all surveys.